Why the counter should never let anyone type a price

Ask a jeweller where margin goes and you will hear about gold rates, competition and making charges. Rarely will you hear the honest answer: it goes at the counter, a few hundred rupees at a time, because someone typed a number.

How the leak works

• Yesterday's rate used today, because the board was updated late.
• A making charge applied at the wrong percentage for that category.
• Wastage waived “just this once” by someone with no authority to waive it.
• A round number offered to close the sale, absorbed silently into margin.

None of these are theft. Every one is a small, well-intentioned decision by a person under pressure with a queue behind the customer. Multiply by the number of bills in a festival week.

The alternative

Publish one board rate per purity each morning. From that moment, scanning a tag produces a price: net weight times today's rate, plus the making rule for that category, plus wastage if that is how you sell. Nobody types an amount. A discount, if you allow one, is a discount — visible on the invoice, attributable to whoever gave it.

The side effect that matters more

Once the price is computed rather than typed, the invoice can show the computation. The customer sees the weight, the rate and the making charge. Arguments at the till drop close to zero, because there is nothing to argue with — and the same transparency is exactly what a tax officer wants to see two years later.

This is why Jevrat has no field for typing a price at the counter. It is not an oversight.